"I'm confident as ever. You have to have confidence. For us, as a team, we feel like we're in control of everything and that's where we want to be at this point."

In his last four games, Dalton has completed 88/161 passes (55 %) with 10 touchdowns and nine interceptions. In his last three games, his Passer Rating has sunk below 63.

But that doesn’t bother Dalton:

"I'm a lot better than I was the last two years. There's some things that I've done this year that I didn't do the last couple of years. For me, I've got to keep improving and keep trying to get better."

To be fair, Dalton is on pace to break his career high 27 touchdown passes and the Bengals are 7-4, comfortably atop the AFC North.

For the Bengals to thrive in the last leg of the season and postseason, Dalton will have to cut back on the turnovers.

Recent history suggests that turnover-prone, middle-of-the-pack quarterbacks can get hot and take their team to the Lombardi Trophy.